


Life in a Box

by buttercups3



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: Gen, LJ 60 Fics in 60 Days, Pre-pilot, Prompt: Boxes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-21
Updated: 2013-09-21
Packaged: 2017-12-27 06:05:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/975315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buttercups3/pseuds/buttercups3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charlie is grumpy: about that time of the month, about her mother being dead, and about being stuck in Sylvania Estates. A window into Charlie's life before Tom Neville came to town and took it all away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life in a Box

**Author's Note:**

> With titular apologies to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - my all time favorite play.

This is what it feels like to have a herd of horses stampede your uterus. Charlie has to catch herself from doubling over in pain. She’s trying not to be short with Danny, who battles everyday to perform the most basic ritual of life – breathing – but he has no idea how miserable it is simply being a woman, especially this time of the month corked up with a pound of sponge. Charlie can’t explain it, but it’s always when she's menstruating that she most longs for her mother. Not that she would discuss the bloody war her uterine lining is waging within with Rachel but that her mother would just _know_ , maybe bake her a tray of cookies, and sit in commiserative silence.

Charlie feels herself migrating on the wooded path toward… _it_. Her lexicon does not contain a particular word for it, and usually she rolls her eyes when Danny takes her here. After all, he's the one who made it. But in Charlie’s loneliest moments, she’s adorned the thing with the odd clover chain. Dad says Rachel loved clover, despite its stumpy flowers that look like little white brains. Rachel preferred abnormal things in general. There’s, for instance, Danny (Charlie calls him deformed when she’s cross with him), the clover, and, of course, that stupid teddy bear Rachel gave Charlie that she can’t quite seem to relinquish no matter how old she gets. It is truly hideous – one sour button eye, the other a frayed string. It’s got lumps instead of limbs.

“Where are we going, Charlie? I thought we bailed on school to go hunting,” the deformed one has inquired who knows how many minutes ago.

Charlie finally finds space in her reverie to answer. “Where do you think, butthead?” Gratuitously peevish.

“You’re a…” Danny grumbles to himself. Then more loudly, “You _never_ want to come here.”

Charlie feels like escalating, as she imagines her ovaries plunking over each like marbles. She’s almost tempted to go home and ask Maggie for help, she’s so miserable. _Almost_. “That’s not true; I come here sometimes.”

She feels Danny shrug behind her. And suddenly they are upon it: a pair of criss-crossed branches upon which Danny has carved (elegantly, even Charlie must admit): Rachel Porter Matheson, beloved mother. A faded photograph of Rachel as a teenager is affixed with string – her skin porcelain, lips curled in a knowing smirk. Breathtakingly beautiful in that way that photographs of mothers are. Charlie feels awkward and gangly in its presence – has none of her mother’s effused grace.

Danny drops to his knees to flick away the dust that’s accumulated. “Do you believe you can love more than one person?” comes his non-sequitur.

Charlie snorts. “I’m never going to fall in love. I want adventure – love ties you down and makes you scared.” Not Danny’s question, but nonetheless she's smug.

Danny cocks an eyebrow at her over his shoulder. “Scared?”

“Yeah. Dad never went after Mom when she disappeared. And now…with Maggie. He practically won’t set foot outside the village.”

“But…do you think Dad loves Maggie as much as Mom?” Danny is too good at sidestepping Charlie’s snark. Too patient.

Charlie bitterly grabs her elbows, squeezing her throbbing breasts. “More maybe.” Unnecessarily cruel, but she can’t stop the bile. “Have you forgotten how much Mom and Dad argued?”

“I don’t remember them arguing. I remember us hugging – the four of us – on that road. I remember how tight her shoulders looked when she walked away.”

“She didn’t even turn around, Danny – didn’t shed a tear! And I mean before that, anyway. She and Dad argued every night when they thought we were asleep. Over whether or not you should climb trees, over where we should stay next, over _everything_!” Her pitch has edged toward shrill, causing a thrush’s song to rattle. Danny has turned away. Charlie is already sorry, but she doesn’t apologize.

“You don’t think Mom loved Dad anymore,” Danny mumbles quietly.

“I can tell you she loved you two more than anything in the world – would have done anything for you,” enters a deep voice behind them.

Charlie is too ashamed to turn around and face her father. He doesn’t know about this place. How he found them is one question, but the more pressing one is _why_?

Dad is impressively forgiving, rarely requires the words I’m sorry. He’s already put his big hand on Charlie’s bony shoulder and is gazing down at Danny.

“A shrine,” Ben observes.

“A what?” Charlie is tempted by the proposition of a new word.

“A shrine – a kind of memorial or place to commune with someone who is gone, someone who watches over you. It’s beautiful. Did you carve those, Danny?”

“Yeah.” Crimson creeps into Danny’s cheeks. He’s clearly not proud of what he was saying when they were interrupted.

“It’s ok, Danny,” Ben senses his son's chagrin. “Your mother loved me, too. We had a hard time keeping you kids safe at the end…before she left. If we sounded out of sync – that’s why. Speaking of safe, I need you both to come back to the house. Now.”

Neither ask why – they know better. Ben is the most generous father one could imagine, but when it comes to outside threats, a chilly edge creeps into his voice that unnerves them. Better to do your own detective work.

Back at the house, Maggie cheerfully greets them, and Charlie pushes by, gloating as Maggie’s crooked smile melts to hurt. Ben offers to make everyone tea, and Charlie takes the opportunity to slip into his room for reconnaissance. She knows it’s wrong, but she does this often. There are so many secrets and lies in this house, and somehow she senses his room is their epicenter. Sitting on his nightstand is, _shit_ , his lambskin – _gag_ – but more importantly, a piece of parchment with an exotic and angular scrawl.

_Dear Ben,_  
 _The Militia is on the move to the northwest. Keep the kids close. They’re after me, you, them – the usual._

“Charlie?” comes the soft-edged British accent behind her.

_Damn!_ Charlie starts so violently that the parchment flutters out of her fingers and under the bed. Who could have written that to her father?

“Looking for something in particular?” Maggie asks sitting on the bed and patting the quilt next to her.

Reluctantly, only because she feels guilty for prying, Charlie plops beside Maggie with a huff. The rooms in their wooden house are perfect squares – little boxes, each separate from one another. How she longs to smash this room to bits – to force the greater structure’s walls to come splintering down. To leave the smothering boxes behind.

“What were you hoping to find?” Maggie presses.

“The usual. Answers.”

Maggie’s eyes drift over to the condom, and she blushes and clears her throat. “You alright? You look pinched. Are you’re in pain?”

“It’s nothing.”

“The absence of pain would be nothing.”

“It’s just my period.”

“Well, I can give you something for that. Your dad can make you a cup of chamomile, and we can put wild yams and red raspberries on the menu. Should help with the cramps.”

“Whatever,” Charlie mumbles. She notices Maggie’s eyes drifting to the condom again. As if this weren’t already embarrassing enough.

“Charlie, are you…?”

Charlie senses Maggie’s discomfort and blurts, “Am I what?” hoping to force this, so she can escape.

“Do you need some contraception?”

“What!? No!” Charlie shrieks, leaping up in horror.

“Ok, ok. Sorry. Just thought I’d check. Better safe than sorry.”

“I _really_ don’t want to talk about this with you.”

“That’s fine. It’s just you seem a bit on edge.”

“On edge? Of course I’m on edge. I live in a box, in a set of boxes. All I want is to get out of here. I’m nineteen years old, for God’s sakes. How long do you people expect me to listen to Aaron Pittman drone on about electricity and hunt the same old deer herd to extinction? I’m bored enough to decay. This isn’t a life!”

Maggie carefully folds her hands and says in a deep, icier voice, “No – _death_ isn’t a life. And that’s what lies beyond the cul-de-sac. Your parents sacrificed too much for you to –”

“That’s right, Maggie – my parents. _They_ have the right to tell me what to do, not you. I don’t care what you think.”

Maggie stands with a slight wobble. “Yes, I know. But I’m going to give you a bit of advice anyway, as much as it is unwanted. In your world the options may very well be _boring_ or _dangerous_. You think you have a choice right now, but you won’t always…You know what one of the last things I said to my boys on this earth was?”

Charlie always feels bad when Maggie brings up her dead boys. Charlie’s also unremittingly curious – it’s simply her nature. “What?”

“No.”

“No?”

“It’s the hardest thing for a parent to say to the ones who are more precious to you than breath or life. But it’s also the most important thing to learn to say. If Ben says no to you, it's because he loves you.”

Charlie shakes her head in exasperation. What the hell is that supposed to mean?

“After you, Charlie.” Maggie is signaling Charlie out of the room, and it irks her that this woman would have more of a claim to her father’s private space than she.

The kitchen reeks familiarly of scorched flowers, as Ben hands Charlie a cracked blue and white china cup.

“Chamomile,” Ben confirms. “I recognized that edge in your voice.”

Charlie sticks out her bottom lip. There’s no privacy in one’s family – none at all.

She takes a sip and tries, “So, Dad. I was thinking. Maybe we could take a trip – you know – go to one of the places on my postcards. Like...Chicago.”

Ben fixes Charlie with the most peculiar look. “No.”


End file.
